The Walking Dead: Sing Me a Song
December 5, 2016 5:53 PM - Season 7, Episode 7 - Subscribe

A Deeper Look at The Sanctuary and the world of the Saviors. Members of Alexandria go to look for supplies.

Next week is the mid-season finale. Will we survive?
posted by areaperson (18 comments total)
 
For the briefest of moments, I thought Carl would kill Negan and redeem himself. Oh, I was so innocent in that moment!
I hope Jesus is okay and I don't want to think to much about Judith. I've been worried about Negan discovering Judith, and if the episode had ended with him picking her up, that would have been a pretty good ending for me. But... then they ruined it.
posted by areaperson at 5:56 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


I mostly liked this episode, I thought the interaction between Negan and Carl was interesting. Olivia slapping Negan was a pretty excellent moment.

I find it hard to care about Dwight and Wife (whose name I can't remember).

What did Negan do before the apocalypse? Is this ever mentioned?
posted by torisaur at 6:30 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Hey, writers? We get it. Negan is a colossal bastard. We get it. This is, like, the fourth episode whose primary function is to demonstrate what a colossal bastard he is. Point taken; please move on.

The resistance movement is shaping up weirdly, with at least five different threads, each operating independently:
  • Oceanside. They're heavily armed, and they certainly have grievance against the Saviors.
  • Jesus' recon mission, on behalf of Maggie and Sasha via Hilltop. This is, like, the only one that makes sense. Find out where the enemy is, what their defenses are like, and come up with a plan before you charge in. (I guarantee that Gregory will betray someone before all of this is over, though.)
  • Carl's suicide mission. I guess I can buy it, because Carl has routinely shown himself to be a dumb hothead kid. Seemed like it was mainly an excuse to get Carl captured by Negan, though.
  • Rosita's suicide mission. Why did Eugene and Rosita have to go to the machine shop to make a single bullet? Rosita already had the casing, right? What's in a machine shop (without electricity) that's going to help? (And why would Rosita trust that Eugene – who, as far as we know, has no ballistics experience – could make a functioning bullet on his first try, without any test fires? Seems like it would be better to wait until you find some ammo on a scavenging run. You might even find more than one bullet.)
  • Michonne's suicide mission. The hijacking thing seems a bit out of character. Seems like she would be smarter than that – she would find allies, track the Saviors back to their HQ, do some recon, come up with a plan. Not just charge up to Negan's front door with nothing but a sword and a snarl.
  • Rick and Aaron, possibly? Seems that they may have discovered a cache of weapons.
  • Oh! And Carol and Morgan and the Kingdom. Seems clear that they'll be involved in the final showdown that all of this is building toward.
All of these suicide missions are kind of dumb. Surely they realize that, even if they somehow manage to assassinate the leader of a large, heavily armed gang, they will likely die in the process. And then the Saviors would come down on Alexandria brutally.

The show routinely spreads its characters too thinly. This arc would work better if they merged or eliminated some of these threads. I want to see characters interacting, you know?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:29 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


Jeffrey Dean Morgan delivers all of Negan's lines with the exact same intonation and stupid dip-bounce. I know that "be Anthony Hopkins" is a profoundly unfair thing to ask of any actor, but anyone attempting to play a menacing dude at the same time that Westworld is on the air has really got to step up his game.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 8:07 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


Torisaur : According to the Walking Dead wiki, Negan was a school coach prior to the apocalypse.
posted by Roger Pittman at 8:16 PM on December 5, 2016


When was the last time Olivia was on screen without someone calling her fat? Season five?
posted by tobascodagama at 10:05 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


Haven't seen the episode, but these comments are reflecting the ones directed at the graphic novel in comic format.

It *does* get better/more interesting/different payoffs.

But yeah, tons of followers stopped around this plot arc and arguably the comic plot arc that ended this and the next one were not terribly engaging.
posted by porpoise at 10:14 PM on December 5, 2016


dip-bounce

I love to hate things articulately, what does this mean?
posted by Rat Spatula at 4:57 AM on December 6, 2016


"dip-bounce" is, I think, the way that JDM sort of leans his head forward as he delivers a line, bends his knees a bit, then brings both back up as if he just bounced off the floor. It's a tic I hadn't noticed until Parasite Unseen said it (sort of like that Riker chair-sitting thing).
posted by Mogur at 5:16 AM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]


Although the first episode of the season did a decent job at hiding it, it's also quite clear now that JDM is not very physically imposing at all. No butt, either. (oatz and squatz bro)
posted by entropicamericana at 7:47 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


What's in a machine shop (without electricity) that's going to help?

A crucible-type thing, to melt lead, I'm assuming? They are so vague about the bullet thing. And yeah, ONE BULLET. Yay.

I spent most of this episode groaning and yelling at the screen. I don't understand this season at all - why did they lose their minds and forget how to make winning WD episodes? Sucks.
posted by agregoli at 9:45 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


According to the Walking Dead wiki, Negan was a school coach prior to the apocalypse.

Huh... I don't know what I expected but it wasn't that.

One bullet is easy to hide. Many bullets are less easy to hide. Maybe that's their logic.
posted by torisaur at 10:10 AM on December 6, 2016


Mogur interpreted what I meant by dip-bounce exactly correctly. Apologies for not being clearer in what I meant by that; I find the dip-bounce so distracting whenever Negan is in a scene that it had not occurred to me that other people might not know exactly to what I was referring. As a character tic it could potentially work in moderation, but JDM brings it out (often repeatedly) in practically every single scene where Negan speaks. At this point it feels almost like a video game sprite animation; an action intended to convey personality, but the repetitiveness of it just reinforcing the artificiality of the scene.

I am not really sure what the writers thought that they were doing with the one bullet plotline. Bullets have not exactly been hard to scavenge up to this point in the series, certainly not more difficult than getting a foundry operational without any modern infrastructure to support it. Is there any reason why, having bullied Eugene into making her a bullet, Rosita would decide not to have him make an enough bullets to fill a clip? Like, I would love it if this ends with Eugene giving Rosita a Simpsons-style Fat Tony "I told you we should have bought more than three bullets" line, but I do not expect that to happen.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 10:28 AM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]


So is Negan going to take Judith and raise her as his daughter? I feel like they are laying the groundwork for that between Negan's wife taking the pregnancy test that was negative, then having Rick tell Michonne that Judith's not really his, anyway, and then having Carl do his dumbassery so now Negan needs to punish them somehow. Ugh. I don't even care, why am i theorizing?
posted by gatorae at 11:05 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Eugene and the bullet: there was an episode in a previous season where the whole plot was getting Eugene to a building where he was intending to manufacture bullets. I assumed he had the experience and had been making them for a while. I was more annoyed that no one else was trained to make bullets that she had to go through Eugene.

Carl! Wtf dude? The time to rethink your rampage is not right when you are discovered! You had an automatic weapon. Mow those assholes down!

I have another for you potato planet: Dwight's definitely going to snap on Neagan soon.

So everyone that can is heading to or planning on heading to the saviors compound, while Neagan is having a lovely time in Alexandria. The writers have a few options here (if they're not going to follow the comics at this point). I hope they don't pick a terrible one.
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:43 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


To clarify, I assume that since that episode the Alexandrians have been making bullets.
posted by LizBoBiz at 5:33 AM on December 7, 2016


Oh no way are they making bullets. I'll believe it when the show decides to show me. Ugh so annoying.
posted by agregoli at 12:40 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think Eugene is reloading spent cartridges, not making new ones, and was wondering how he was handling the primer.

So I looked, and now I know why they needed a machine shop. The hard part looks like it's making a new primer -- the linked tutorial assumes that you've already got one.
posted by Mogur at 4:42 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


« Older Movie: Home Alone 2: Lost in N...   |  Timeless: Last Ride of Bonnie ... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments

poster